By:

Oleksandr Ivanitskyy Andrea Rodríguez María Alcaraz Alejandro Álvarez

Planned obsolescence Planning Type

Functional design and technology History of obsolescence Objectives and consequences

Contamination No sustainability

Current situation What can we do?

What planned obsolescence is

It is the planned ending of the life of a product. After a period of use which is set by the manufacturers, it becomes useless or worthless.

Types of obsolescence:

Functional obsolescence: This means that the product

is predetermined to fail.

Design obsolescence: A commodity that goes out

fashionable.

Technological obsolescence: It means that as the product

becomes obsolete, its technology is out-dated. Enterprises sequence their updates with the aim of all of them being consumed.

History of obsolescence

In 1924, the main producers of the world's light bulbs agreed to reduce the lifespan of them to 1000 hours.

Bernard London introduced the concept of planned obsolescence and proposed the expiration date of the products, which would encourage the need of buying new goods, increasing consumption.

In 1981 a high surrender bulb was designed in Germany, but it was rejected because it did not reach sales targets.

Now LED bulbs have being created with an average lifespan of 25 years.

Objectives

Short-term economic gains Positively stimulates demand Big earnings for the manufacturer Force the consumer to:

Repair the product Buy another similar

New ways of business: Insurance after the warranty period Repair the damaged product

Consequences

Background aspects like: Excessive consumption of natural resources

(raw materials and energy) Pollution and no sustainability

Pollution

The planned obsolescence generates large quantities of waste and pollution.

Waste mostly goes to countries like: China Ghana India

In these countries a lot of people (mainly children) must pick up waste with the aim to collect products such as silicon (Si) or copper (Cu).

No sustainability

Every obsolete product is a pollutant, whatever involves obsolescence does not reflect sustainability.

The quantity of waste generated is enormous. Each person produces 1kg of waste

daily Every day 6.5 million tons of waste are

generated in our planet

Current situation Many new businessmen and

companies are changing their minds, trying to produce prototypes and new ways of production. Companies default to imposing a life on all its products, ensuring the sale of more products and therefore increasing profits.

The decision to use planned obsolescence is not always that easy because it can affect the product itself and can make it fail.

For example, obsolescence in computer software, can affect its hardware.

What can we do?

The planned obsolescence applies to a wide range of products. Consumers can claim for the durability of their products and they can investigate to get information about what planned obsolescence is, the reasons of it and its effects.

What can we do? A real example of this was when a

customer claimed against Apple because of the short battery life of their iPod.

This fact shows that if we would like we can get out of this situation and step by step, change it.

Bibliography

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolescencia_programada

www.youtube.com/watch?v=chJT_uxSqNk

http://www.somospsico.com http://ecocosas.com/eg/iphone5-ob

solescencia/